This could well be the most compelling book you’ll ever read. Also the most harrowing, horrific … and, ultimately, inspirational. Eve Ensler’s “In The Body of the World” is a truly remarkable work. It’s an achievement not only in terms of reaching a searing level of honesty within oneself, but also in sharing it with strangers, in the form of this book. It allows the reader to learn all about Eve, from her traumatic, childhood abuse to tireless work battling violence against women, to a courageous fight to overcome uterine cancer.

The Tony Award-winning playwright (“The Vagina Monologues”), author, performer and activist paused to talk with The Daily News in the midst of a hectic book tour.

Ensler had endured a nine-hour surgery, infection, and chemo. Reached on her cellphone, she was actually at the Mayo Clinic, where she had been treated.

“I came back here, because they asked me to do a reading here last night and a big lunch/lecture today,” Ensler says. “Hundreds of women came. And it was incredible to see the number of women who came up to me to say, ‘Thank you. I’ve had chemo. This is what I needed to hear. And I’m going to give this book to everyone.'”

Ensler advocates turning pain into power. Over the course of her nightmarish medical struggle, she found that was she able to let go of her agonizing childhood.

“To have had the frame for the chemo, which allowed it to burn away at my past and to zap it, so to speak, has been the biggest liberation in the world. I was talking about that this morning, and so many cancer patients came up to me afterward with gratitude, because they said it gave them a whole frame for approaching chemo, as opposed to perceiving it as only a painful activity. So it becomes a matter of putting an intention around it and working on it as something that could transform the past.”

Earlier in her life, Ensler had felt disassociated from her body. Self-medicating with drugs, alcohol and sex didn’t help.

“I had been trying for so many years to get back into my body, and when I came out of that surgery, I was suddenly in my body, even though I was very weakened and sick. It was so glorious to be in myself that it gave me a particular kind of energy that I hadn’t had before.

“Everything I’ve ever written has been this attempt to get back in my body, beginning with ‘The Vagina Monologues’ and then ‘The Good Body.’ I obviously had tried all kinds of bad ideas to get back into my body, ideas that seemed right at the time, but weren’t terribly effective. On this tour, I’m meeting so many women who have been desperately trying to get back into their bodies. And part of the dialogue is, what are the ways, besides catastrophic cancer, to get back in?”

In addition to this new connection with her body, Ensler also discovered a sense of how all the elements of her life are in some way connected.

“I think that’s really what the book’s about. It’s looking at the irony that this dystopically, pathologically dividing, cell-dividing disease was reuniting me with nature, was reuniting me with my sister. It was making me see connections I had never understood before, like that abscess infection — the oil in my body — and the Gulf spill. And all the ways cancer gets made and what is cancer and the carelessness of cancer. Cancer is everywhere from our carelessness. And violence. And the violence toward my body. And the violence toward the Earth. It all just began to make sense. … Or no sense, if you know what I mean.”

In the midst of an ordeal like the one Ensler suffered, it can be tempting to just give up. But Ensler has been working in the Congo, trying to stem the widespread rape, torture and mutilation of women. When diagnosed, she was in the process of helping to build City of Joy there, where women can heal emotionally, establish new lives and then return to their communities to lead.

“Getting City of Joy opened was a huge factor in my surviving, because I felt like we had made this promise. And I didn’t want to let people down, to leave them without resources. I mean, they were building it and they run it and its theirs, but my commitment was to find the resources and to be there for that. And, in the middle of this, the idea that I wasn’t going to show up, it just sucked.”

The magnitude of the problems facing women in places like the Congo can be daunting for those working toward change.

Ensler says, “There are days when I feel completely overwhelmed. And I feel it’s impossible. And there are days when I look at One Billion Rising (the global campaign Ensler created to end violence and to promote justice and equality for women) and the fact that we got a billion people on the planet, that women rose in 207 countries and were completely committed to this, and I feel so not overwhelmed. I feel so energized. So I range between the highs and the lows. The possible and what’s not possible.

“I was just with the graduating class at City of Joy. I looked at those girls, and I had seen them when this group started, and I saw how they had arrived. They had bullet wounds. They had missing body parts. They had children they had brought, who they were wanting to learn how to love, who were the products of rape. They were a mess. And I looked at them when they were graduating, and these girls were miracles. They were strong and beautiful and powerful. And they were sure of themselves. When I see that, I think, ‘Well, anything’s possible.’ Given the resources and given the support, those women will turn the country around.”

Asked what she would most like readers to take away from the book, Ensler says, “What I want them to know is, that we’ve been told that our denial is protecting us. But, in fact, if you don’t pay attention to a tumor growing in your body, or you don’t acknowledge climate change, or you walk by the poor people around you, in fact, it isn’t protecting you. In the end, it will come to get you. And I hope this book is about coming into your body, which is coming into the world and being embodied, so that you feel the world and you feel what’s going on around you, so that you are propelled to act.

“The only thing that can really get me down is when I see people just walking asleep, indifferent. But where people are in struggle, fighting back, standing up and fighting off, I always feel energy.”

Despite all the internal and external conflicts Ensler has encountered, she remains positive. “I would say 90 percent of the time now, I am quite happy. Look, when you come so close to dying, and you get to live, it’s hard not to be grateful every day. It’s hard not to wake up and go, ‘Wow! I got to be here!'”

Think you know Disneyland? Well, ponder this: There are people who go there every single day. Seriously. Every day. And about a zillion others who shelled out hundreds for annual passes. What do they know that can make your visit more enjoyable?